Okay, come on, put up your discipline dukes. Let's go. It's time now for the annual Lent Wars.

If Christmas is the season to be jolly, Lent is the season to be needlessly

scrupulous and neurotic and to argue, especially online, about things that have

very little to do with imitating Jesus which is supposed to be the whole point of Lent.

So here is the truth about Lent.

Starting with the meaning of the word Lent.

The Teutonic word Lent, also known as Lengthn, you need a flam supply to pull that off.

It refers to the 40 days fast that precedes Easter and it originally

meant the word spring as in spring summer fall winter. And since ye olden Anglo-Saxon days, Lent took over from the Latin term,

quadrigesima, which means the 40th day.

And right away we run into a problem,

because if you sit down with your calculator and your calendar and you

count out the number of days during Lent they do not total 40 whether or not you

include Sundays we'll get to that bitter battle shortly.

The number 40 is more bibically symbolic than it is literally calendarally accurate.

Now it's a very important number in the Bible. Rain fell for

40 days and 40 nights during the flood in Genesis 7 verse 4. Noah waited for 40 days after the tops of the mountains were seen after the flood before

releasing a raven in Genesis 8 verses 5 through 7.

Spies were sent by Moses to explore the land of Canaan, promised to the children of Israel, for 40 days.

We see that in numbers 13, versus 2 and versus 25.

The Hebrew people lived in lands outside the promised land

for 40 years in numbers 32 verse 13 we see.

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